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Review

Trita Parsi's Treacherous Alliance is a landmark work of diplomatic history that strips away the ideological veneer from the Israeli-Iranian rivalry to reveal the geopolitical machinery beneath. Drawing on 130 interviews with senior officials from all three countries — including former Mossad chief Efraim Halevi, Iran's UN Ambassador Javad Zarif, National Security Advisors Brzezinski, Scowcroft, and Lake, and dozens of other key decision-makers — Parsi reconstructs the secret history of a relationship that has profoundly shaped the Middle East and American foreign policy.

The book's central revelation is how thoroughly strategic calculation, rather than religious ideology, has driven the oscillations of Israeli-Iranian relations. Under the Shah, Israel and Iran maintained an intimate but secret alliance — the "periphery doctrine" — in which the two non-Arab states cooperated against common threats from pan-Arabism and the Soviet Union. Iran bought Israeli weapons and agricultural expertise; Israel received Iranian oil and a critical counterweight to its hostile Arab neighbors. The relationship was managed through intelligence channels, with Iranian diplomats posted in Israel officially recorded as serving in "Bern 2."

What makes Parsi's account so compelling is his demonstration that this cooperation survived even the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Throughout the 1980s, while Ayatollah Khomeini issued calls for Israel's destruction, the two states continued clandestine military cooperation, culminating in the Iran-Contra scandal. Israel lobbied Washington not to take Iranian rhetoric seriously. Iran's policy was to "bark a lot, but never bite." The revolutionary regime's ideology, however inflammatory, masked a consistent pursuit of realpolitik.

The real rupture came not from ideology but from geopolitical earthquake. The collapse of the Soviet Union and Iraq's defeat in the 1991 Gulf War destroyed the common threats that had held the unlikely partnership together. In the new unipolar world, Israel and Iran found themselves competing for influence in a region suddenly lacking a stable order. Parsi meticulously documents how Israel's Labor Party — the very same leaders who had lobbied Washington on Iran's behalf in the 1980s — launched a deliberate campaign to recast Iran as an existential threat, not because Iran had changed, but because Israel needed a new enemy to sell the Oslo peace process to its public and to preserve its strategic value to Washington. As one Israeli analyst confided to Parsi: "We needed some new glue for the alliance. And the new glue was radical Islam. And Iran was radical Islam."

Parsi is equally incisive about Iran's side of the equation. Tehran's opposition to Israel escalated not because of ideological fervor — which was actually cooling in the 1990s — but because the Oslo process and the Madrid conference threatened to create a new regional order from which Iran was excluded. When Washington pointedly refused to invite Iran to Madrid despite Iranian overtures, it confirmed Tehran's worst fears and set in motion Iran's turn toward supporting Palestinian rejectionist groups. Iran's anti-Israel rhetoric, like Israel's anti-Iran rhetoric, was strategic performance aimed at undermining the other's regional position.

The most devastating chapters document a pattern of squandered American opportunities. Iran's constructive role in post-9/11 Afghanistan — including Javad Zarif's pivotal intervention at the Bonn Conference that brokered the Afghan government — was repaid with inclusion in the "Axis of Evil." Iran's extraordinary 2003 comprehensive negotiation proposal, which offered concessions on Hezbollah, Hamas, the nuclear program, and recognition of Israel through the Arab League's two-state framework, was simply ignored by a Bush administration intoxicated with neoconservative ambitions. Each American rebuff strengthened Iranian hard-liners and validated their suspicion that Washington would never accept Iran as a legitimate regional power.

Parsi writes with the analytical precision of a political scientist and the narrative skill of a journalist, making complex diplomatic maneuvering accessible without sacrificing nuance. His even-handedness is remarkable — he lets officials from all three countries indict themselves through their own words. The result is a book that demolishes simplistic narratives from every direction: the Israeli claim that Iran is an irrational actor driven by apocalyptic ideology; the Iranian claim that its opposition to Israel is purely about justice for Palestinians; and the American claim that its Middle East policy serves stability rather than the interests of its most influential allies.

Published in 2007, the book's analysis has only gained relevance. Its core argument — that the Israeli-Iranian rivalry will continue to destabilize the region and drag the United States into costly confrontations until Washington abandons containment in favor of regional integration — reads as both prescription and prophecy. Parsi's ultimate warning is stark: the ideological framing that both Israel and Iran have adopted for strategic purposes risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy, manufacturing the very clash of civilizations it claims to describe.

Reviewed 2026-04-06

Notable Quotes

When one scratches the surface of the ferocious Israeli-Iranian enmity, an affinity between the two cultures emerges. In many ways they are more alike than different.

Introduction, on the cultural parallels between Israelis and Iranians that lie beneath their public hostility. — Israeli-Iranian relations, cultural affinity, hidden connections

Blinded by the condemnatory rhetoric, most observers have failed to notice a critical common interest shared by these two non-Arab powerhouses in the Middle East: the need to portray their fundamentally strategic conflict as an ideological clash.

Introduction, stating the book's core thesis about the Israel-Iran rivalry. — ideology vs. geopolitics, strategic conflict, deception

We needed some new glue for the alliance [with America]. And the new glue was radical Islam. And Iran was radical Islam.

Efraim Inbar of the Begin-Sadat Center, explaining Israel's post-Cold War strategic recalibration. — U.S.-Israel alliance, threat construction, Iran as boogeyman

You have to recognize that we Israelis need an existential threat. It is part of the way we view the world. If we can find more than one, that would be preferable, but we will settle for one.

An anonymous Israeli Iran expert explaining the Israeli security establishment's worldview to Parsi. — Israeli security culture, existential threats, worst-case thinking

Remember, the Iranians are always five to seven years from the bomb. Time passes but they're always five to seven years from the bomb.

Shlomo Brom of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, mocking the intelligence establishment's systematic overestimation of Iran's nuclear timeline. — nuclear threat inflation, intelligence failures, self-fulfilling prophecy

Iran hasn't changed; everyone else had. Iran was more prominent on the Israeli radar not because it had become more antagonistic toward Israel but because all previous threats had more or less evaporated.

Analysis of why Israel pivoted to framing Iran as its primary enemy in the early 1990s. — threat perception, geopolitical shift, power vacuum

The willingness to do positive work for America almost ended, because they never reciprocated. Whatever positive Iran did, the response was always more and more isolation.

Masoud Eslami of the Iranian Foreign Ministry on Washington's failure to recognize Iranian goodwill gestures in the early 1990s. — U.S.-Iran relations, unrequited diplomacy, isolation

Everything was going our way. All systems were go. And Iran was a problem for us, but so what? We had everything else.

U.S. Ambassador Daniel Kurtzer describing American hubris after Iraq's defeat and the Soviet collapse, explaining why Iran was excluded from the Madrid conference. — American hubris, unipolar moment, Iran exclusion

Rabin played the Iranian threat more than it was deserved in order to sell the peace process.

Efraim Inbar of the Begin-Sadat Center, confirming that Israel's Labor Party deliberately exaggerated the Iran threat to build domestic support for Oslo. — threat inflation, Oslo peace process, domestic politics

Israel's campaign against Iran came at a time when Tehran was lowering its profile on the Palestinian issue.

Analysis of the paradox that Israel escalated its anti-Iran rhetoric precisely when Iran was moderating. — timing paradox, moderation punished, strategic rivalry

To put the country in jeopardy on the ground that we are acting on an Islamic basis is not at all Islamic.

President Hashemi Rafsanjani rejecting the idea that Iranian foreign policy should be guided by ideological duties under Islam rather than strategic interests. — pragmatism vs. ideology, Iranian realpolitik, national interest

I don't think they are irrational, I think they are very rational. To label them as irrational is escaping from reality and it gives you kind of an escape clause.

Former Mossad chief Efraim Halevi contradicting the 'mad mullahs' narrative about Iran's leadership. — Iranian rationality, strategic calculation, threat narratives

We should not be calculable and predictable to them. The U.S. could not mess with Imam [Khomeini] because he wasn't calculable. Saddam's fall was because he was calculable; they knew that even if he had weapons of mass destruction he would not dare use them.

Amir Mohebian, conservative Iranian strategist, explaining Iran's deliberate use of 'simulated irrationality' as a deterrence strategy. — simulated irrationality, deterrence, strategic ambiguity

It wasn't until Zarif took him aside that it was settled. We might have had a situation like we had in Iraq, where we were never able to settle on a single leader and government.

Ambassador James Dobbins recounting how Iranian diplomat Javad Zarif broke the impasse at the Bonn Conference by convincing the Northern Alliance to accept a power-sharing arrangement in Afghanistan. — Bonn Conference, U.S.-Iran cooperation, Afghan reconstruction

Axis of Evil was a fiasco for the Khatami government. That was used by the hard-liners, who said: If you give in, if you help from a position of weakness, then you get negative results.

Farideh Farhi on how Bush's 'Axis of Evil' speech, coming weeks after Iran's critical assistance in Afghanistan, destroyed Iranian moderates' credibility. — Axis of Evil, Iranian moderates, diplomatic betrayal

We're prepared to house, pay, clothe, arm, and train up to twenty thousand troops in a broader program under your leadership.

Iranian military commander offering to help rebuild the Afghan army under U.S. leadership during the Geneva Channel negotiations, adding with a laugh that Iran was 'still using the manuals you left behind in 1979.' — U.S.-Iran cooperation, Afghanistan, missed opportunity

Cheney and Rumsfeld were always there to sabotage our cooperation in Afghanistan if it got too far.

Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's chief of staff, on neoconservative efforts to block the State Department's strategic opening to Iran. — neoconservatives, bureaucratic warfare, Iran policy

Even a democratic Iran would be considered a threat to Israel if it could challenge Israel's military superiority — nuclear or conventional.

Parsi's analysis of why regime change in Iran would not resolve the fundamental Israeli-Iranian rivalry. — regime change, military supremacy, structural rivalry

The Arabs could tolerate the substance of close Iran-Israel relations as long as this was not apparent from surface indications.

Declassified U.S. embassy memorandum from Tehran, 1972, describing the Shah's balancing act of maintaining secret ties with Israel while preserving Arab relations. — secret diplomacy, Iran-Israel alliance, Arab sensitivities

In many cases, you can see how planning for worst-case scenarios leads to self-fulfilling prophecies. It's much easier to give worst-case scenarios. It usually serves the personal interest of the planner.

Shlomo Brom of the Jaffee Center critiquing the Israeli intelligence establishment's doomsday mindset. — self-fulfilling prophecy, intelligence culture, threat inflation

When you define someone as your worst enemy, you say a lot about yourself.

An Israeli expert on Iran commenting on how Israel's mythologizing of Iranian cunning reveals as much about Israeli self-perception as about Iran. — mirror imaging, enemy construction, national identity

Anti-Semitism is not an eastern phenomenon, it's not an Islamic or Iranian phenomenon — anti-Semitism is a European phenomenon.

Ciamak Morsathegh, head of the Jewish hospital in Tehran, on the distinction between Iranian political opposition to Israel and European anti-Semitism. — anti-Semitism, Iranian Jews, European history

I am proud to be Jewish, I am proud to be an Israeli, but I have nothing in common with these people.

Ehsaq, an elderly Iranian Jew living in Israel, expressing the cultural disconnect Iranian Jews feel with Ashkenazi Israeli society. — Iranian Jews in Israel, cultural identity, diaspora

The real danger to Israel of a nuclear-capable Iran is twofold: it will significantly damage Israel's ability to deter militant Palestinian and Lebanese organizations, and it could compel Washington to cut a deal with Tehran in which Iran would be recognized as a regional power at the expense of Israel.

Parsi's analysis of why Israel fears Iranian nuclear capabilities — not because of a potential attack, but because of the strategic rebalancing it would force. — nuclear deterrence, strategic balance, Israeli supremacy

Iran is a country that the United States cannot contain indefinitely, that Iran becomes more antagonistic when excluded, and that the United States can better influence Iran by helping it integrate into the world's political and economic structure rather than by keeping it out.

Final chapter, presenting Parsi's policy recommendation of regional integration rather than containment. — engagement vs. containment, regional integration, U.S. policy